The Essence of Faiths
Whispers from everywhere
The Bhagavad Gita on selflessness
The Bhagavad Gita dates from between 500BC and 200 AD. It is the main ‘gospel’ of the Hindu faith. It is written as a conversation between Arjuna (an unenlightened warrior) and Krishna (an enlightened driver).
Arjuna has doubts about leading his army into battle against another army which includes some of his relations. Krishna uses the situation to explain about the battle between the good and evil forces within each human being. This amounts to a battle between the selfish self and one’s higher nature. Krishna talks about the paths of knowledge, devotion, selfless action and meditation.
In the Christian religion there is the idea that you should give up your selfish desire for worldly pleasure so that God’s Will may be done through you and that, in this way, you will come to know the peace that passes all understanding. Krishna has the same idea in Chapter 5 of the Bhagavad Gita where he also explains how to travel the Path using the Hindu methods of Yoga.
A person who neither hates nor wants the rewards of his actions is known to be somebody who has given up worldly pleasures. Somebody who has gone beyond the idea of love and hate can easily give up worldly pleasures and thus find freedom. 5.3
The person who is in harmony and who sees the truth thinks,‘I am not doing any work’. This is because when he is seeing or hearing, smelling or touching, eating or walking or sleeping, or breathing or talking or grasping or relaxing, and even in opening or closing his eyes or going to the toilet, he remembers: ‘It is only the senses that are engaged with the external things of the world’. 5.8,9
If a person aims to be free of desire, fear and anger he must shut out all external sense objects, keep the eyes and vision concentrated between the two eyebrows, balance the inward and outward breaths in the nostrils, and thus control the senses, mind and understanding. A person who can do this is truly free and enlightened. 5.27,28